


with you

by zanymalik



Category: EXO (Band), NCT (Band), SuperM (Korea Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Canon Compliant, M/M, Mentioned NCT 127 Ensemble, Past Relationship(s), Polyamory, Porn With Plot, a truly heinous amount of side ships, lapslock, superm loves each other so deeply and i cry over it daily, the words "dude" and "bro" used 15 times each
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:13:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25985692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zanymalik/pseuds/zanymalik
Summary: “look, it’s just, like — stupid, okay?” he tries to reason, practically desperate.“obviously it’s not, or you wouldn’t be here, pouting,” is taeyong’s easy response with a squeeze of mark’s shoulder that’s teasing and comforting all at once.“it’s just, like … okay, not to be like, a girl about it or anything, but. kai and lucas forgot our anniversary.”taeyong just sighs, shakes his head, and mark feels even dumber.“it's okay to have feelings, you know, mark-ah. it doesn't make you a girl, stereotypes aside — it just makes you human.”“i don't wanna be a human then,” mark says with a dramatic groan, flopping onto his back.———the first anniversary that lucas and jongin forgot and the events that lead up to it.
Relationships: Kim Jongin | Kai/Mark Lee (NCT), Kim Jongin | Kai/Mark Lee/Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas, Kim Jongin | Kai/Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas, Mark Lee/Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas
Comments: 10
Kudos: 202
Collections: SuperM Fest Round One





	with you

**Author's Note:**

> i think i lost ten years of my life writing this fic but god damnit, i love it so much. 
> 
> lumarkai is real.
> 
>  **for superm fest prompt #49:** it’s one thing when your boyfriend forgets your anniversary. it’s another when both your boyfriends do.

“you looked so fucking good tonight. i can’t believe i’m gonna have to share you with every man, woman, and child in canada who’s in love with you now. _great._ ”

“i can’t trust your judgment because you’re, like, obviously delusional from sleep deprivation or something, but by all means, keep telling me how pretty you think i am.”

“i’m serious.”

“how serious?”

“serious enough that i got a little hot and bothered by your sexy, washed out, 244p dance moves on my phone screen.”

“you’re ridiculous.”

“you’re sexy.”

“uh huh. you’re okay, i guess.” and then there’s a beat. “isn’t it, like, noon there? don’t you have more important things to do than take your shirt off to annoy me?”

“no.”

“okay.” there’s a rustle of a comforter and sheets and then: “fine, you win. tell me what you were thinking about while watching the world’s most pixelated periscope stream.”

“i was thinking about how much i wanted to unbutton that lacy _shirt_ you wear one by one, let you push me onto my knees, lick up your —”

that’s enough for mark.

“i’m going for a walk,” he announces way, _way_ too loudly, cheeks flushed a bright red, despite the fact that he’s been laying here in this overlarge hotel bed, facing the wall, still and silent and unintentionally eavesdropping on johnny and ten’s soon-to-be-horny facetime session because he, like, _wanted_ to sleep, considering he’s been tired as hell since they got into the van and left the venue, the city lights of vancouver rushing past in a blur as his eyelids drooped closed.

he’s out of bed quicker than he thought possible, just barely catching a glimpse of ten dropping his phone onto his — _jesus_ — apparently naked chest before he all-but-scampers out of their hotel room, the door closing behind him with an uncomfortably loud slam that makes him jump and makes him feel like the overworked, cranky teenager he used to be (okay, like, all of five minutes ago but whatever; he’s still definitely overworked and occasionally cranky).

mark realizes pretty quickly that it’s awkward to stand in the middle of a long, ornately carpeted hotel hallway in nothing but a t-shirt, boxers, and too-tall crew socks that end up midway up his calf, even when you’re the only one there.

he doesn’t even really know where he thought he was going to go once he left he and ten’s room, just that he had to get out of there. and it’s not — he’s not _mad_ at ten, not mad at johnny, especially considering he’s endured probably even worse conversations than this one in the past however many months since the two of them made it official. sometimes he feels bad that he gets to spend time with ten when johnny doesn’t, that he gets to spend time with johnny when ten doesn’t, both of their schedules so hectic, never quite intersecting.

maybe it’s just how stupidly in love with each other they are. and mark loves that for them! genuinely! because he also loves both of them — ten, who’d dubbed him his “evil twin”, johnny, the older brother he’d always wanted but never had. even in the midst of their literal years of highkey lowkey flirting with each other, be it in sly digs or questionable remarks that made mark audibly yelp _“what?!”_ in disbelief, it’s always been obvious how much they care.

 _ugh_. it makes mark’s chest ache. 

somehow (via his own two feet, presumably, but who’s to say), he finds himself in front of room 701, a far cry from _his_ room 724 down at the opposite end of the vast hallway. with a long sigh, he knocks.

a soft voice from behind the door calls, _“coming!”_ in english, and mark awkwardly rocks back and forth onto the balls of his socked feet while he waits. and waits. in reality it’s something like forty five seconds, but in this moment, it feels like a lifetime. 

finally, the door swings open and mark is greeted with a mess of silvery white hair and big, round eyes that look more and more concerned by the second once he realizes who his visitor is, eyebrows knit together. mark just frowns and lets himself be ushered into taeyong’s room, a single with a big ol’ king bed that he decides to jump up onto, butt scooting forward a little so his legs can dangle off the edge. 

“what’s wrong? shouldn’t you be out celebrating with your school friends?” taeyong asks, gingerly sitting down beside the sulking boy, neither of their legs long enough for their feet to touch the floor. “they were so happy and proud to see you tonight, _markeu_.”

“i did — hang out with them, i mean, for a little bit after the show. it was nice to see them and all, but i told them i was too tired to go out for drinks with them.”

taeyong regards him with an appraising eyebrow, and states the obvious: “you don’t seem very tired right now.”

mark just _groans_ at that, hands scrubbing over his face, knowing he should’ve expected that answer. it’s nice to see taeyong get to relax a little in the midst of superm promotions, proudly introducing himself as “superm’s middle line taeyong” in interviews and goofing off a lot more onstage during ments, having a different brand of fun that he knows taeyong doesn’t let himself have when it comes to his role in 127. unluckily for mark at the moment, it seems like taeyong is fully capable of sliding right back into that _leaderly_ role, seeing right through mark’s bullshit — though there’s probably a part of him that knew it would end up like this, hence how he ended up at his door in the first place.

“i just thought — _ugh._ i just thought that maybe lucas and kai-hyung would want to do something tonight after the show? but they’re out for dinner with baekhyun and taemin.”

it sounds even sillier when he tries to vocalize it than it does in his own head, which scarcely felt possible.

taeyong’s face crumples into something far softer, looking like the human embodiment of that emoji with the big, sad, glittery eyes, and he drapes an arm over mark’s shoulders, scooting a little closer.

“hey, you’ll only be apart for a little while when we go back to korea, and then we’ll all be in europe before you know it,” his hyung says with a soft little smile. “paris is very romantic, you know. i haven’t told anyone this, but that’s where doyoungie and i kissed for the first time. right in front of the louvre.”

now it’s _mark’s_ turn to look surprised, eyes wide as he turns his head to look at taeyong, searching for a trace of humor on his face, some sign that he’s lying. the two of them are super close, yeah, and sometimes mark thinks of them like his loving mom and dad when he’s away from home (aka _always_ ), but they’re also … good at bickering like a cat and dog might. good at being awkward, too, doyoung wrapping taeyong up his arms sometimes and threatening to plant a kiss on his cheek until the smaller boy can wriggle out of his grasp and sneak away, flustered. _huh._

“you’re fucking with me.”

“i’m not. it was right after i filmed my dance cover. he was there and told me he wanted to help, so … he held the speaker and watched me and then after we finished filming, i went up to him and kissed him.”

mark’s stuck firmly in between feeling really sappy and happy for them and also feeling even more miserable for his lovelorn self. 

“that sounds really nice, _hyung_ ,” he finally manages to eke out, genuine despite the utter pout that’s made a home on his face again.

“you’re still sad.”

there taeyong goes with the whole … smart leader-y _hyung_ brain thing again. maybe one day he’ll debut in his fifty ninth sm entertainment boy group and finally, _finally_ be something other than the clueless little _maknae_ and acquire an all-knowing _hyung_ brain.

_damn._

“look, it’s just, like — stupid, okay?” he tries to reason, practically desperate.

“obviously it’s not, or you wouldn’t be here, pouting,” is taeyong’s easy response with a squeeze of mark’s shoulder that’s teasing and comforting all at once.

“it’s just, like … okay, not to be like, _a girl_ about it or anything, but. kai and lucas forgot our anniversary.”

taeyong just _sighs_ , shakes his head, and mark feels even dumber.

“it's okay to have feelings, you know, mark-ah. it doesn't make you a _girl_ , stereotypes aside — it just makes you human.”

“i don't wanna be a human then,” mark says with a dramatic groan, flopping onto his back, forcing taeyong to wriggle his arm out from beneath him. he's being ridiculous. he _knows_ he's being ridiculous, but maybe he just wants to bask in his own bullshit for a little while.

luckily, taeyong seems to get the hint, chuckling softly as he lays back gently beside the other boy, a fond little smile gracing his naturally pouty mouth, head turned to face him even if the two of them end up just laying there for what feels like a half hour but is probably five minutes tops. mark doesn’t realize that his eyes have closed until taeyong says, gently as ever: “you should get back to your room and get some sleep. the two of us are really going to need it.”

mark blinks his eyes open quickly, turning his head to look at taeyong with a small furrow of his brow.

“ten and johnny’s dicks are probably still out, knowing them. i’m not gonna get any sleep.”

with a placid nod despite the small grimace that very briefly crosses taeyong’s delicate features, he sits up and scoots up the bed until his back hits the pillows, conceding, “you’re probably right. sleep here.”

  


* * *

  


a few random let’s plays by way of youtube on the hotel room’s smart tv later, and mark’s still wide awake, though his hyung’s most definitely sleeping pretty soundly, curled up on his side and looking equal parts cute and peaceful. he doesn’t mind, though, really — if anything, it’s kind of comforting to have the dull hum of a dude’s voice narrating some game or another on the tv screen combined with the soft exhales of taeyong beside him, like the world’s weirdest white noise machine.

he rubs his eyes that feel way too tired to even still be _open_ right now, wills himself to go to sleep, but instead, his thoughts wander …

way back a few years ago, even, when maybe the tallest boy he’s ever seen wanders into the practice room with giant doe eyes and an infectious grin, bowing to him and a few of the other trainees mingling on the floor before they’re set to begin, introducing himself with an amount of confidence that mark could only dream of having:

“hello, my name is wong yukh— lucas!”

wong yukh-lucas laughs so hard at himself that he has to sit on the floor to contain it, long legs stretched out and big hand covering his mouth, and _man_ , it makes mark laugh, too, and now, he can hardly think of a moment in which he _isn’t_ laughing with lucas present. 

he remembers the giddy feeling bubbling up in his chest the day they do their shoot for boss promos when he finds out that he’s getting paired up with lucas, who looks so excited to finally debut that he might burst. _my friend is really cool_ , mark declares as their concept.

“mark is also very cool,” lucas tells the camera, and the thought of someone so handsome and charming and talented saying that about _him_ makes him absolutely giggle in disbelief, much to lucas’s equally-giggly chagrin.

they do pretty good during their shoot, though, laying beside each other but facing in opposite directions, chewing bubble gum like it’s their damn job (which it _is_ , today, he guesses), hanging on lucas’s shoulder and just looking _cool_ and _badass_ and _totally_ like a boss in the process, only bursting out into a fit of hysterical laughter one (1) time when he’s a little overzealous with the bubble he blows, watching it pop against lucas’s shoulder and the both of them dissolving into utter silliness as the stylist noonas frantically try to get the pink residue off of lucas’s expensive jacket without ruining it.

lucas is always fun, always happy. he always knows how to get mark out of his head — which, _great_ , lucky for him, happens kind of a lot. his agency loves him and knows that he’s talented, which is why they keep promoting him, but somehow, it just makes mark feel like he has to work twice as hard to prove to them — to _everyone_ — that their trust in him is not unfounded. he ends up busting his ass and exhausting himself and occasionally getting snippy when he doesn’t think he’s perfected a certain bit of choreography that he thinks he should have perfected by now, getting even snippier when people tell him that he should take a _break_ —

but that doesn’t happen with lucas, probably because lucas radiates warmth and joy and knows how to do things like sling an arm over mark’s shoulder and very sneakily guide him out of the practice room before mark even realizes what’s happening and can protest. they go for food (and hell yeah, mark can keep up with giant lucas and his giant stomach, _fuck yeah_ , metabolisms), they go to the arcade. they end up back at the dorms sometimes and watch movies, mark too exhausted to give a shit about the fact that he ends up laying with his head on lucas’s thigh, lids fluttering closed as he drifts off into unwanted but much-needed sleep.

lucas is simple, easy, and that’s probably why they’re so close (besides the fact that they’re both 99 liners, besides the fact that they crack up every time they imagine lucas’s tall ass looming over the rest of the dreamies). things aren’t complicated and that’s just so goddamned nice that mark doesn’t even know how to handle it sometimes.

like the time that mark falls asleep in lucas’s bed after they stay up basically all night, unsuccessfully trying to beat their old win streak on overwatch. he’s mortified, yeah, to not only wake up _spooning lucas_ (and — fucking _why_ , considering his face just barely reaches the back of lucas’s neck, so his own neck feels stiff considering he isn’t using a pillow) but to wake up _spooning lucas while also having a boner_ , his leg hitched up and draping over lucas’s thigh like his dumb unconscious self could possibly be capable of keeping him trapped there against him.

moving feels … wrong. he definitely would wake lucas up, and then his already-warm face would flare beet red, and then he definitely would have to explain himself, and then he definitely would start stammering like an idiot and tripping over his words and probably saying even _more_ incriminating shit —

except he doesn’t really noticed the change in lucas’s slow, heavy exhales, has no fucking clue that the other boy is awake until he feels a big palm groping blindly at him, fingers curling into the fabric of his sweats with a soft grunt until said big palm ends up squarely pressed against his dick, slipped between their bodies. mark shudders at the sudden warmth, the pressure, as though some pretty girl’s touching his dick for the first time, and he finds himself unable to keep from squirming a little against lucas’s hand.

with a big, blasé yawn, lucas rolls over, easily shrugging mark off of him and blinking his overlarge doe eyes at him in return, and just. starts palming over his cock again, like it’s something they’ve done a hundred times before, finally ( _finally???_ as though mark has ever thought about this in his entire life, _please_!!) dipping his long fingers beneath mark’s waistband to actually curl around him and start stroking him for real, much to mark’s red-faced and wide-eyed embarrassment considering the wet spot that’s already started to darken the front of his pants, considering the way lucas’s stupidly large fist barely has any room to move up and down his length. 

_jesus_. what the fuck?

“ _pants_ ,” lucas says in english, voice low and raspy with sleep, and mark’s horny ass can do nothing but oblige, turning onto his back so he can lift his hips and let lucas drag his sweatpants off of him, letting out an embarrassing little moan once lucas starts touching him again, barely stifled by teeth catching against his lower lip. _jesus,_ he thinks he’s gonna come so fucking fast — frankly, he's still amazed that he hasn’t come already, all things considered, but maybe his brain’s too fucking shocked to let it all end so quickly, before it can even _begin_ to process whatever the fuck is going on —

and the next thing he knows, his eyes flutter open and he realizes that _lucas has his dick out, too_ , and _he is also hard_ and also _what the fuck,_ he expected lucas’s dick to be big, because duh, but, like … _shit._

the mattress shifts beneath his weight as lucas just about straddles mark, calves bracketing his thighs but not quite settling his weight against him, and all mark can do is curl his fingers desperately, uselessly into the sheets as lucas proves himself to not just be handsome and talented and good at everything idol-related and person-related — but he's a good fucking multitasker, too, considering the way the other boy curls his fingers around _both_ of their cocks, making mark’s dick twitch with pleasure, leaking even more to coat those stupidly long fingers, to make both of them slide _so_ easily within his grip as he jerks them both off together. 

mark was fucking doomed from the start, but it only takes a few slow strokes until he can’t take it anymore, muscles of his belly contracting as he comes in spurts all over lucas’s dick, his hand, his own damn self —

and it doesn’t take much more for lucas, either, and once it’s all said and done, with mark panting and feeling like he came so hard he gave himself a concussion, both of them gross as fuck but kind of dealing with it because they’re both too tired to give a damn …

their eyes meet, and they burst into hysterical laughter yet again.

they continue like that, having fun with each other, with the other members, occasionally fooling around at night, because, well, they’re horny teenagers, and they’re both pretty sure that their management would prefer to turn a blind eye to the hormonal whims of their idols as long as it’s with one another and not anything that starts some huge dating scandal. mark and lucas barely consider it as such, anyways, just two dudes giving each other a helping hand every now and again (and, okay, in a fit of bravery, mark tries to blow lucas one time and chokes on his dick like three times which is super embarrassing, but whatever) — it’s not gay, they’re not boyfriends, they’re just best bros.

he misses lucas once him, ten, and winwin get swept off to prepare for nct’s china line debut. (okay, he misses ten and winwin hyungs, too.) they don’t get to see each other for months and months, but it’s okay because he gets to throw himself back into his work again, releasing _superhuman_ with 127 and going on their very first world tour, travelling all over the united states with his members and, frankly, having a hell of a lot of fun doing so. wayv’s debut is _killer_ , too, and mark maybe finds himself sharing an airpod with taeyong so they can watch the music video in the van on the way back to their hotel in san jose two or three times.

it’s not long after that the company wrangles up him and taeyong in between their busy touring schedule and tells them about superm, about their roles in the supergroup, about who they’ll be sharing the stage with. any self-doubt as to why _he_ of all people was picked out to debut in yet another group, any concerns about how tired the two of them are going to be, juggling superm’s debut, promotions, and tour in between nct 127’s continuing tour dates, any worries about being put into a group of basically strangers that he’s idolized for … a long time — everything vanishes in the face of the excitement bubbling up in his chest, the giddy smile that creeps across his face when he hears the name _lucas_.

  


* * *

  


okay, maybe he should have been more concerned about the other members of superm — or more specifically: baekhyun, taemin, and kai.

mark has always been a fan of shinee, and has always been a fan of exo. hell, shinee was the group that made him _want_ to become an idol when he laid on his tiny twin bed in vancouver and jammed to “replay” and “juliette” and “growl”. getting to perform “replay” with sm rookies kind of blew his tiny mind back then, even if he’ll cringe like a motherfucker _now_ if someone tries to show the clip to him.

he’s lucky that he gets to meet baekhyun-hyung before superm really starts, doing a surprise feature on his “un village” stage at smtown live in tokyo. that eases some of the tension at their first meeting at the sm office, considering baekhyun’s natural ease and humor, plus the fact that he has taeyong at his side, along with ten and _lucas_. (thank god!!!)

mark still has a really hard time with the whole _not_ bowing respectfully to his elders and seniors thing either way, can hardly _look_ at taemin and kai as they sit next to each other and hug and catch up on the past however long, thick as thieves, best friends. _fuck_ , he cannot believe this — he can’t believe that he’s in a group with his literal _idols_.

maybe he should pinch himself, just to make sure he’s not dreaming. maybe he should ask someone to pinch him. oh, fuck, he’s pinching taeyong’s thigh, which he only realizes when taeyong looks at him with giant, rounded eyeballs and tugs his hand off of him to set it back down on mark’s own lap instead. 

it’s maybe simultaneously that mark looks across the table and makes eye contact with kai, who smiles kindly in return, and mark gives a wide smile in return that probably looks like a _grimace_ for how much his stomach jumps when it happens. he can see taemin smile and laugh softly under his breath and give kai’s arm a squeeze, which only serves to make mark’s face burn bright red as he forces himself to turn his head and focus on the presentation they’re being given. 

_oh_ , he’s so screwed.

  


* * *

  


mark doesn’t know _why_ he turns into a babbling idiot every time he tries to talk to kai one-on-one, except for the fact that he completely _does_ know why: he has a giant crush on kim jongin, exo’s kai, gucci ambassador, instagram influencer, horrifically talented dancer, and maybe one of the most genuinely attractive people he’s ever laid eyes on.

he’s always kind of had a crush on kai, even long before he joined the agency — even if he’s just played it off as a talent crush kind of thing up until this moment in time, a holdover from too many hours watching exo dance practice videos and studying up for dream stages. kai’s always so effortlessly sexy when he dances in a way that mark doesn’t think he could contain even if he tried, each movement of his body so fluid and dynamic that mark feels downright robotic in comparison. sometimes mark gets lost in watching him practice even while the rest of them are sitting on the floor taking a water break, gaze glued to the older boy’s reflection in the mirror as he moves, until lucas punches him in the shoulder with an eruption of giggles, an excitable: “ _dude._ ”

it’s not the first time he’s gotten caught staring, and maybe even more embarrassingly, it’s not the first time he’s gotten caught staring by kai himself. his life was maybe easier when he could just zone out with a youtube video fullscreened on his phone, bite his lip as a besuited kai in all red gives him the _fuck me_ eyes — _no_ , jesus, he’s giving _the camera_ fuck me eyes — while rolling his hips to the chorus of “love shot”, and mark could be content with that.

unfortunately, mark’s life is not that easy.

kai corners him after rehearsal one day, lingers in the locker room at the studio as the others drag themselves back to their van after a long practice.

“mark — i just wanted to tell you that you’re doing a really great job.”

all mark thinks he’s doing a good job at is being a huge idiot, and he kind of stares dumbfoundedly for a moment before he can even think of answering.

“i, uh — thanks? sorry, not a question. thank you, kai-hyung. it really means a lot, especially coming from you.”

kai smiles at him, honey sweet, and it’s so genuine that it makes mark want to melt into the earth.

“you can call me jongin, you know. you don’t have to call me kai.”

mark nods emphatically, agreeing, but also just kind of blushing a little as he very quickly responds: “i know! it’s just … okay, this is weird, i know, but i think i’ve just been such a fan of you as, like, _kai_ for basically forever so i kind of forget that that’s cool now.”

 _oh._ that makes kai — jongin? sure — smile even wider, flashing his pearly whites at mark, a full-fledged grin. mark just plays with the cuffs of the overlarge sleeves of his hoodie, smiles kind of timidly back.

“that’s really sweet.”

“i’m just being honest.”

“you watch me dance a lot.”

well, that’s super fucking true. mark debates how to counter this, runs through about a thousand excuses in his head: he’s unsure of the choreography and wants to make sure he’s getting it right, or maybe he’s just daydreaming about that awesome watermelon birthday cake he had this year, or maybe he forgot to put his contacts in and he’s not really seeing shit, or maybe he …

just has a really big crush on kim jongin.

“it’s okay that you do. i don't mind,” kai adds helpfully, maybe a bit too kindly, after a moment of mark feeling like and probably _looking_ like a goldfish flopping around on a desk after a particularly ambitious leap out of the metaphorical fishbowl known as his life.

“you're just so —” he starts unhelpfully, gesturing with his hands towards kai, up towards his face, down his body and back up again, flailing a little, as though that explains everything. then, gesturing pitifully at himself, he continues, “and i’m so … yeah.”

“you're so _what_? cute? talented? i wouldn’t say it if i didn't genuinely mean it, mark-ah.”

mark thinks he might die on the spot.

“i don’t want things to be awkward between us,” kai insists, earnest as all hell, taking a step or two around the bench situated between all these lockers so he can let the warmth of his gaze wash over the younger boy, practically envelop him in a soft smile that's so damn sweet. “i want to be your friend.”

mark is pretty sure his heart is going to beat out of his chest considering how loud it sounds right now, so loud that kai can surely hear it, too. he's also pretty sure that his face is super red which is, like, super embarrassing. ( _SuperM-barrassing_ , some stupid little intrusive thought in his head proclaims with the kind of self-important pride that no one in their right mind should be allowed to have for something so cringeworthy.)

he opens his mouth, feels like that goldfish choking on air all over again as he ekes out: “i —”

and then the rest of that thought doesn’t even matter because kai’s hands cup mark’s cheeks and he leans in to press a warm kiss against his mouth, soft and tender and sweet and — forget that part about dying on the spot earlier, because now he's _surely_ passed the fuck away, dead and gone, his tiny, awkward, confused little spirit finally free to leave this mortal plane. mark lee, born 1999, died at the tender age of 20 on the cold, tiled floor of a locker room that smells like idol sweat. gone but not forgotten.

maybe he gets shocked back to life or something, though, because suddenly mark remembers that he should probably _react_ and/or _do something_ , because that's what normal human people do when someone kisses them — they kiss back. so mark parts his lips a little against kai’s mouth so he can kiss what ends up mostly being his fuller lower lip. maybe he even remembers to do something with his hands, still hidden beneath sweater paws, very tentatively placing his hands on kai’s hips like mark thinks he's fragile china that his clumsy ass might break.

mark thinks his reciprocation kind of sucks so he just. thinks that maybe he should try again, try to make up for it so that kai-hyung doesn't think that he's a total virgin loser who doesn't even know how to kiss people. that's why he ends up very quickly leaning right back in after they part for a breath, and it's deeper this time, his head canting so their lips can slide a little easier against each other, and it's really nice, makes this heady kind of feeling wash over mark that makes him feel dizzy, kind of overwhelmed, even though he wants to chase it some more —

kai lets out a soft sound when it's mark — eager, excitable mark who feels like he has something to prove — that ends up licking into kai’s mouth first, wanting to taste him, wanting to hear his hyung make one of those pretty sounds again, wanting to feel the slide of his tongue against his own. what would it be like to back his hyung, his idol, up against the lockers? what would it be like to sneak a hand under his shirt, feel the soft warmth of his skin, feel taut muscles contract —

and then it's kai who ends the kiss abruptly, rips mark right out of his horny fantasies, cheeks squished a little by kai’s palms as mark just gapes at him wordlessly, silent save for the sound of his own soft panting.

there's something like an apologetic smile that crosses kai’s lips, something that … turns a little more satisfied once kai declares, “now that we’ve got that out of the way, there's no reason for things to be awkward between us anymore.”

with that, he walks out of the locker room, leaving mark standing there, overheated and flushed, a hand shoved down the waistband of his sweatpants to adjust himself to little avail, tugging the hem of his hoodie down as low as it'll possibly go as he shamefully shuffles out, too, praying that the van didn't leave without him.

  


* * *

  


it’s hours and hours later but mark’s hand is down his fucking pants again (go figure, everyone’s shocked, alert the authorities, et cetera), except now he’s laying on his back, squished tightly onto his dorm room bed next to lucas who lays parallel to him, a veritable mirror image of himself — if mark was, like, six feet taller and infinitely, indescribably handsomer. lucas practically begged his manager to ditch the wayv dorms and sleep over at 127’s and _god_ , those big puppy eyes work wonders every time.

so that’s how they’re here, both of them palming themselves super casually — lucas over his basketball shorts, mark’s fingertips brushing back and forth against the ultrasoft cotton of his boxer-briefs. this is really … _not_ a surprising turn of events, and frankly, both of them probably kind of expected it to end up this way the moment the idea lightbulb went off very obviously above lucas’s head.

“today was fun,” lucas says to break the silence between them, the lower tone of his voice rumbling out of him and washing over mark who sighs, nods in response as though lucas can hear him even though a slight turn of his head reveals that the other boy’s eyes are closed.

“yeah.”

fun. _fun!_ that’s … definitely a word that describes today, a day in which one of his childhood idols kissed him right on the fucking mouth, a day in which he kissed one of his childhood idols right on the mouth, a day in which he nutted the fuck up for ten seconds and _made out with kim jongin_. today definitely wasn’t confusing. today definitely wasn’t enough to riddle himself with self-doubt, still not entirely sure that he didn’t hallucinate the whole thing amidst some kind of feverish, post-rehearsal exhaustion. mark definitely isn’t recounting every single second of their encounter, desperately wanting to know how he can live in a world like kai’s where kissing someone out of the blue _alleviates_ awkwardness rather than expounding upon it.

“you and kai today…” lucas says as a kind of shit-eating grin creeps across his face, and mark kind of just wants to _scream_ because _what the fuck_ , lucas is already tall and handsome and talented and now he can read fucking minds?!

he groans, _loudly,_ throws an arm over his eyes as though to shield himself from lucas’s judgement, really just looking like some kind of _gone with the wind_ lady fainting on a couch except he’s also still touching his dick, and he practically whines, “ _yo_ , shut _up_.”

“okay, okay, okay,” he concedes, even if he doesn’t sound too genuine.

lucas doesn’t even know the half of it — what happened between him and kai today. not even a quarter of it, or something teeny tiny, like a sixteenth.

he can feel lucas shift beside him, presumably lifting his hips up, can hear the sound of fabric dragging against skin as lucas’s shorts are tugged down his thighs, kicked off of the bed. after a satisfied sigh, the steady sound of skin against skin starts up, hits mark’s ears, hits him beneath his belly button, a pang of horniness that feels like he’s falling off a cliff for a brief second. _jesus_. he’s pretty sure he could get off to the sound of lucas getting off alone — unsurprising considering all the times when he was way, way younger, living with dream and too paranoid that he’d get caught by their dorm noona watching porn that he’d hide underneath his comforter, headphones in and his phone face down on his belly as he jerked off solely to the pretty, breathy, whiny moans of girls getting fucked or eaten out or whatever.

that kind of feels like his cue to slip his hand beneath the waistband of his underwear, fingers curling around his very rapidly hardening dick to tug himself out with a groan, wriggling his hips to inch his sweatpants down little by little, too lazy to pull them all the way off. his pace is practically leisurely, like a nice walk in the park on a temperate spring day, kind of slow but still steady and still with a clear destination in mind, fingers idly smearing the precome leaking from his slit down his shaft as he strokes himself.

“he just,” lucas starts, cut short by a low sound in his throat. “he did look really good.”

mark doesn't really know why lucas won't stop bringing kai-hyung up but he doesn't super care, stupidly replying, “uh huh,” as he keeps jerking himself off, fist twisting around the base on every downstroke.

“was glad he caught you staring and not me.”

but those words don't really make sense inside of mark’s tiny horny caveman brain so he just kind of hums noncommittally and keeps doing his thing, listening to lucas’s soft grunts, listening to the sound of lucas’s hand speeding up, the sound of him panting. 

kai did look good. like, really good, his golden skin glistening and beads of sweat rolling down the column of his throat, his thin t-shirt that probably once had sleeves but had them cut off for maximum sexiness clinging to his sweaty torso, the outlines of his dancer-toned-but-not-too-toned stomach. his full lips parted, the way the corner of his mouth quirks upwards into a self-satisfied smirk when he realizes he infused his own brand of sensuality into a move already choreographed to be “sexy” ...

“he kissed me today.”

 _oh_. mark doesn't know why he said that, frankly doesn't even realize that he _did_ say it until it's too late.

“what,” breathes lucas, and it's not really a question, because he forgot the question mark at the end.

“yeah. yeah, like,” mark starts, brain fuzzy as he slicks his hand up with some more precome and keeps his fist sliding up and down his dick. “like after rehearsal. in the locker room? we were just talking and. i dunno. he kissed me.”

maybe lucas tries to answer, or maybe he doesn’t. all mark knows is that he can hear lucas’s pace speed up, and it makes him lick his lips which suddenly feel bone-dry, makes him swallow hard.

he keeps talking for some reason, unprompted, unable to stop himself, typical mark lee word vomit.

“we kinda — made out. in the locker room. that’s why i was late. i dunno what happened, but like — i liked it so much, and his hands were on my face, and he just …”

and mark trails off so he can stop covering his face with his stupid arm, blink his eyes open to turn and ask lucas to rummage through his side table drawer and find his lube because he kind of wants something wetter than what he’s currently getting, and —

it proves to be just in the nick of time because with a long, drawn out moan, wrist flicking fast, lucas comes, pearlescent strands painting his stomach, dripping down his fist as he works himself through every last bit of it, and mark ends up gaping at him, dick still in hand, stomach feeling all fluttery and funny and. and.

“dude, did you just —” mark tries to ask even though the answer is right in front of his fucking face, but the way lucas’s already-big eyes seem to widen as he pants _hard_ , lays his head back against the pillow as though _exhausted_ , says that lucas just might be in as much disbelief as mark is right now.

even stranger still is the fact that even in the dim light of his bedside lamp, mark can see the tips of lucas’s ears turning red, spreading little by little until even his cheeks are colored by his blush, and it’s unlike anything mark lee has ever seen before in his whole entire life. he didn’t know that wong yukhei, tall, handsome, talented wong yukhei, was capable of blushing. or being embarrassed. or. anything other than happy-go-lucky and silly and _confident_.

what could possibly be so embarrassing?

surely mark’s come faster than that before, like, “like a virgin, touched for the very first time” fast, especially when it comes to lucas and their hangouts where they dick around together. (dick around ... haha.)

he’s in the process of opening his dumb mouth to console him, or whatever, reassure him, “hey, man, it’s okay —” when lucas sits up suddenly and makes a beeline for the bathroom, turning the shower on immediately once the lock clicks.

today gets weirder and weirder.

with a sigh, and determined not to waste his perfectly good boner, mark scoots into the space that lucas recently vacated and reaches into his drawer for his lube, laying back against the sheets and soaking up the leftover body heat and the smell of his cologne, the sound of the water hitting the tiled floor of the shower his only soundtrack now.

he still gets off, sure, but it’s not as fun without someone there beside him.

  


* * *

  


luckily for mark (and it really does feel lucky! not even in a sarcastic way!), he doesn’t have much time to dwell on any of this. not that he knows what _this_ is, not that he knows why he’d even need to dwell on _that_. it’s confusing.

but hey, he’s busy! he can’t think about it anyway!

superm have a whole entire album to record, have choreography to learn, have photoshoots to try not to look like a complete dweeb in. they have to part ways, too, because just because superm is ramping up and preparing for their debut, that doesn’t mean that the world stops turning for nct 127, wayv, exo, and taemin. (his poor hyung, missing the rest of his members. mark’s too needy for that, loves all of his hyungs way too much to healthily cope with something like all of them enlisting.)

there’s meetings with executives about 127’s next comeback, probably in the spring of next year. there’s concerts in taiwan, japan, new york city for the launch of z100’s “jingle ball”. _global motherfucking citizen festival,_ alongside alicia keys, onerepublic, h.e.r., pharrell williams, carole king, and motherfucking _queen_. (what?! _what???????_ his life is so fucking crazy.) maybe the best part is getting to watch the rest of the festival alongside his members in a special vip area off to the side of the stage, dancing like fools, sipping some drinks, just looking like a group of vaguely rowdy normal ass _boys_ being vaguely rowdy normal ass boys, like they won’t get mobbed by fans and sasaengs tomorrow when they leave the relative anonymity that the streets of new york can provide in favor of the unfathomably long security line at jfk.

he’s exhausted beyond words, too exhausted to even watch a movie with taeyong on the flight to lax, his forehead smooshed uncomfortably against the side of taeyong’s trusty neck pillow as he sleeps for the duration of the fiveish hours it takes to land on the tarmac, back aching, body sore.

their dorm in los angeles — fuck, okay, it’s not a dorm, it’s literally, like, _a mansion_ in beverly hills that makes him feel like kim kardashian minus (some of, but not all of) the ass. it’s stupid big. it has a damn _pool_. thank you, capitol records.

it's a silly thing, picking their rooms and, subsequently, their roommates. luckily for them, the whole shenanigan is filmed for sbs, with taemin-hyung practically begging and pleading for the coveted single room with a private bathroom, his full lips pouted even if he’ll deny it later. mark ends up talking to the members, thus the cameras and the entire world, warning them about how bad it smells when he has to shit and how frequently this may occur because of his sensitive stomach and he really has no idea why he's word vomiting so badly right now but kai is sitting next to lucas and mark is sitting next to lucas so in a way that kind of means that he's sitting next to kai, too, by like, the transitive property or something, right? and now he's thinking about how he's going to be living with kai very soon and he's thinking about that time he made out with kai and all of a sudden he's just talking and talking and laughing and squeezing lucas’s thigh like a vice and.

yeah.

mark doesn't really care where or who he rooms with, honestly, because this whole thing is supposed to be about bonding before debut, isn't it? so it's fine. he can handle it. he can handle anything.

just another day in the life of mark lee!

after all that perfect-for-the-camera, cutesy kind of drama, he ends up snagging the cool room with the pool table and the large, open bathroom with ten, which is a-okay with him, a pleasant luck of the draw that doesn't make mark sweat nervously or make him horny, which is pretty ideal all around.

… okay, maybe he's still nervous, kind of. 

mark banishes ten to the patio outside their room so he can stress-poop in this giant, glass-walled bathroom in peace.

  


* * *

  


rehearsals continue, as do tons of interviews by tons of cameras for future videos to be determined or something, trying to capture every little moment of this so-called zeitgeist of 2010s kpop, the industry’s first supergroup. they're the avengers of kpop, or so they're told. the phrase kind of makes him want to cringe to death, but frankly, mark really does feel a whole lot like peter parker: just a normal, average dude thrust into extraordinary circumstances and doing the best that he can.

there's a lot of lead up to their debut and it's … so unlike the five hundred other times that mark has debuted that it’s kind of hard to wrap his head around. there's the live, moderated q&a that's streamed to fans globally on youtube, but it's the fans that greet them there, in person, screaming as cameras film the members striding dramatically from their van, into the building, and filing down the hallway to the raised platform that's their stage for the evening that makes him kind of feel like beyoncé or, like, the beatles, sitting down for some very important press conference. 

mark gets to sit at one end of the table with kai beside him, and honestly? maybe it's the time they've all been able to spend together since their move to la, all the hard work that they've been putting in day in and day out rehearsing for their showcase, but for once, it's kind of nice to sit there next to his hyung and just _be_ , knowing that agonizing over his own problems and hang ups isn't going to be productive in front of all of these fans, knowing that they've earned this moment of relative ease.

he can't even help jumping into the conversation and adding onto taeyong’s answer about what it's like to be in a group with their seniors, resting his hand on kai’s wrist as he babbles about how their bonds have grown, about how awkward he was during their first photoshoot in comparison to now when he feels like he can sling an arm around kai’s shoulders with ease because of how much closer the group is. mark tries not to melt from the ooey gooey feeling that bubbles in his stomach when kai nods and smiles one of those perfect, megawatt smiles at him.

“it's very special to get close to the people we’ve always looked up to,” he hears himself saying emphatically.

maybe that's all it boils down to, really — crumbling those pillars that he's placed these three people on, so high above him that mark can practically feel a phantom pain in his neck from looking up at them. they're just like him, though, aren't they? 

they're all friends.

he even finds himself admitting to the moderator, to the fans, to the world, and maybe frighteningly of all, to kai-hyung himself how much he's idolized kai from watching so many videos of him dancing, being intimidated by his “strong presence” and afraid to approach him when rehearsals first started. it probably explains a lot more than he's ever said out loud, anyway, and he kind of has a hard time looking anywhere but at the moderator as he says it, but he can't help but explain how he's learned how soft that kai can be, how much they laugh together, how much they enjoy spending time together.

it's definitely sappy and it's definitely a lot, so he sure does end that thought by dropping a peace sign and hastily gesturing for them to move onto the next question, please and thank you.

what mark doesn't really expect is for kai to talk about how nervous he was to meet the nct members, how shy he gets when meeting new people in general. that's already hard to imagine the way it is, but then he goes through them each individually; taeyong, so good-looking and so _good at everything_ ; ten, handsome, a great singer, a great dancer; lucas, tall, handsome, but somehow _so cute_ at the same time; and most mortifying, mark, his dumb self, apparently _adorable_ , which makes him hang his head and squeeze his eyes closed as though that might make the prickly warmth on his cheeks dissipate.

mark survives it, somehow. the world continues. the “jopping” music video premieres. life is good.

  


* * *

  


it happens. their debut showcase happens right in the middle of los fucking angeles at the famous capitol records building, an entire block of the bustling city closed off exclusively for them. it's nuts.

mark has a habit — whether it’s a bad habit or not is yet to be determined — of focusing so hard on his performances to make sure that he's absolutely perfect and doesn't miss a beat that he doesn't take the time to really stop and take it all in, commit each city and venue and sea of faces to his memory. he busts his ass and works so stupid hard and then he blinks and it's over, just like that, though the euphoric high of his performance-induced adrenaline rush washes over him, makes him grinny and giddy as they bid the fans watching them online worldwide farewell and promise to see them soon on their first ever tour before making their way off stage.

it’s hours later now and everyone's having a good ass time in the private lounge of some bougie american chef’s restaurant — everyone meaning mark, the group, their managers, a fuckton of capitol records execs, some big-time financial investors, and the main man himself, lee sooman. luckily, they've successfully made it through the more formal celebratory dinner and everyone's kind of drifted off into their own smaller groups all over the lounge, music in the air, people chattering in english and korean and some mishmash of the two that mark’s having a hard time processing.

okay, so maybe he's a little drunk. or — not drunk. tipsy and pleasantly so after a few fancy flutes of celebratory champagne, the apples of his cheeks a little warm, tolerance admittedly kind of shitty because of how little time he has to do normal 20-year-old things like drink alcohol and be stupid.

it's the same with lucas, he assumes. except for the fact that when lucas is drunk, he just kind of spaces out, sits there and takes everything in, watches people and listens to what they’re saying and maybe even belatedly smiling in response or chuckling to himself even if he’s not technically included in the conversation. it’s cute. it’s _so_ cute. lucas is so goddamn cute.

god, okay, maybe he _is_ a little drunk.

okay, nope, he’s _definitely_ a little drunk, because mark has found himself with his arms draped loosely around lucas’s neck, tucked against his side, and he really maybe kind of wants to pull his legs up onto their comfy little sofa and stretch them out across lucas’s lap.

alright, he’s an affectionate drunk. and he’s chatty, too.

“i can’t believe we did this, dude,” he hears himself babbling. “like, we _did that_. like, _what?_ we’re in fucking la! you had your first fucking concert _ever_ in l-fucking-a. _yo._ what the _fuck_.”

lucas doesn’t answer, but that’s okay, because he didn’t really expect an answer anyway.

“what the fuck. god, you’re so fucking cool, lucas. and i just, like — i missed you a lot while you weren't promoting with us — i mean, for real, you deserve all the good stuff that happens to you, with the fancy fashion brands and with wayv, and i just thought about you a bunch when we were touring america and how there was so much stuff i thought you'd like to see and stuff i wanted to show you? but you're doing such cool shit, dude. you're doing such cool shit and i'm just so, _so_ glad that, like, i get to be a part of this cool shit with you."

and his throat feels a little dry now after all that rambling so mark just takes a sip of his malibu bay breeze from the two tiny little straws floating around in the orangeish mixture before quickly discarding it on the table in front of them, cringing a little at the taste of the rum as it burns his tongue and slides down his throat. (hey, fuck you, baekhyunnie-hyung, this was supposed to taste _good_! what kind of leader are you!!)

lucas doesn't answer him again but mark still doesn't expect anything in return — not really. he kind of feels like he should do a vibe check or something, though, tipping his chin back so he can look up at lucas's giant eyeballs with his own giant eyeballs and. lucas looks at him back, brow furrowed, lips drawn into what mark can't even believe is a frown.

"are you okay?" mark asks, considering it kind of seems like he _isn't,_ but lucas is already mumbling a quick, "yeah," before he can even finish the question.

huh.

lucas looks away from him quickly — like, uncomfortably quickly — but mark takes it upon himself to follow the path that those giant eyeballs take until they end up landing straight on kai-hyung, sidled up beside taemin-hyung across the room, whispering something in his ear that sends them both laughing.

mark looks at kai. then he looks back at lucas. then he looks back at kai, and then right back to lucas.

it hits him. _hard_.

"you like him," mark blurts out, still unable to keep the words from flowing past his lips. "oh, holy shit. holy shit. you like kai-hyung."

lucas is back to not answering him again.

"dude, i'm so sorry. i, like — had no idea. oh my god, that's why, that night in my dorm room ..."

"yeah."

"i'm sorry. i shouldn't have said anything about him — about him, uh, kissing me. i'd never wanna hurt your feelings, dude. wow, that was so, like, wack of me—"

suddenly, lucas snaps out of his trance, looks down at mark while looking even _more_ confused.

"what? no. that's not why."

now mark is the one who's super fucking confused, his lips pouty as he tries to piece it together in his own head. _make it make sense, dummy_ , he chides himself, but everything's still a little hazy and lucas looking down at him like that makes any possibility of a coherent thought fly right out the window because _god_ , he's just so _handsome_ , it makes his insides want to melt.

"i thought you said you liked kai-hyung," mark says, dumbly, obviously.

"i do."

"so then why did you ..."

"because i like you, too, dude."

oh.

" _oh._ "

... oh!!! wow. _wow._ wow, that. barely makes any sense to mark's inebriated little pea brain right now. lucas likes him. lucas likes _him_.

"sorry, i just ... i didn't wanna make it weird, 'cause i like hanging out with you and messing around and stuff. i get it if you don't want to —" lucas starts to babble now that mark's chosen this moment to become the silent one, cycling through an endless stream of question marks and exclamation points in his brain as he tries to process any single part of this.

"no, no, oh my god, no, i really, _really_ don't want to stop. i like you _so_ much, xuxi," mark interrupts, unsure where the nickname came from, feeling funny on his tongue but sounding so, so cute and _looking_ cute, too, with the almost shy-looking smile on lucas's face when it comes out. "i didn't want to make it weird, either, that's why i never ... fuck, can i kiss you?"

lucas doesn't say anything in return, just leans down and kisses mark instead. it's definitely nothing, like, _perfect_ , not really something out of some cheesy romcom if only because the taste of rum and pineapple in his mouth mingling with the nasty, hoppy beer lingering on lucas's tongue is a weird combo. it's a nice kiss, though. it feels well-earned after a hard day's work — after a hard twentyish years' work, even.

he finally can't resist the urge to pull his legs up onto the other boy's lap, a hand reaching up so his fingers can drag through the shorter hair at the nape of his neck, already feeling squirmier, needier, knowing that it's not just his alcohol-induced clinginess that's to blame. it kind of feels silly to get this specific brand of giddy-excited-fluttery-nervous when they've had their hands on each other's dicks countless times before — hell, he had lucas’s dick in his _mouth_ , before, even if only temporarily. lips pressed against lips should be the _least_ of their worries, a piece of cake.

it's just that … it's right at this moment, when lucas’s arm winds around him to hold him tightly, when lucas’s tongue grazes his and licks against the backs of his teeth, that mark lee realizes that he and lucas have never actually kissed before now. it’s actually _so_ stupid. and kind of perfect.

he can hear himself whine against lucas’s mouth as he feels that big palm slide down the fabric of his dress shirt to settle against his lower back and it makes him squirm, his fingers curling into lucas’s collar, wanting and needing to be closer, closer, closer, to feel lucas pressing against him, to wrap his thighs insistently around his waist. 

and then lucas stops kissing him, unprompted, which feels super fucking rude right now, dude, but he guesses that maybe some people need to breathe or something from the exertion of ruining poor people like mark lee’s entire life forever by making out with them and leaving them wanting so badly it's kind of embarrassing.

“ _hyung—_ ” lucas breathes, and mark wants to laugh against the crook of his neck because _ha ha_ , dummy, there are no hyungs here — there's only the two of them, definitely no record label executives and other rich people, definitely no group members. there's just lucas and mark, mark and lucas, just two dudes being bros while testing out their formerly repressed horny tenderness (tender horniness?) for each other.

suddenly, his favorite honey sweet voice trickles into his ears before hitting him — hard.

“i’m really happy for you guys, seriously.”

mark tips his head back, the rest of him still clinging to lucas like a vaguely horny baby koala, squints as though his intermittent blurry vision is from forgetting his contacts _and_ glasses and not from like, having the alcohol tolerance of a tiny freshman sorority girl. yep, he sure is sitting across from them — kai-hyung, that is.

why does he feel like he just got caught doing something he shouldn't?

mark’s mouth feels a little dry and he wants to reach for his bay breeze to quench his thirst, but that would mean actually drinking more of that coconutty nightmare that practically sends a chill through him just _thinking_ about it. that would also mean letting go of lucas, which would subsequently mean acknowledging to kai that he’s holding onto lucas and also that his lips feel all tingly and kiss-swollen and nice.

“ _hyung_ ,” lucas tries again all cutely, eyes big and pleading like an overgrown puppy dog. mark really wants lucas to be able to say other words to kai, to try to make him understand, but …

it's not meant to be.

kai’s hands fold in his lap as he gazes across the small glass coffee table that separates them, studies both boys in what mark feels is a cautious kind of way that simultaneously makes him feel super self-conscious and super warm.

“i’m not going to snitch on you guys, if that's what you're worried about. not that you were being particularly, ah—” and kai takes a pause to glance over at the heads of sm mingling with the capitol records people. oh, right. “... subtle. but they really don't care what you do within the company as long as you don't cause a scandal.”

and after a quick, pointed look at baekhyun who’s chatting animatedly with the pretty bartender with long, blonde hair, kai shrugs, which makes mark even more unsure of what to do with this piece of information. all he can do is try to unpack kai’s words, each inflection in his tone. is he resigned? is he regretful? does he think it's total bullshit? again, he wishes he could read minds — or at least that kai wasn't such a dreamy enigma to him.

"we're not dating," mark blurts out finally, blushing pretty much the moment he spits the words out because it sounds so stupid and also might _sound_ pretty bad to lucas, like he's rejecting him or something. he's not — he's _definitely_ not, considering the way he stays stubbornly clinging to the larger boy, but it's just. he doesn't want to ... he doesn't want kai to think that he —

oh, _god_. he really fucking likes kai. like, _really_ fucking likes him. it's not like kai came over here begging mark to make out with him instead. he definitely didn't do anything than come over here to check in on his dongsaengs, surely only to see how they were doing and make sure they were okay after their few drinks.

maybe mark only says it because he can't handle the thought of kai thinking that he isn't horrifically into him, even if he also can't handle the thought of saying such a thing out loud.

he opens his mouth to speak again, but it doesn't really work, so he just tips his chin up, looks at lucas with wide eyes, praying that he didn't, like, hurt lucas's feelings with his word vomit because he. really kind of would love to date lucas, but kai's presence really just always sends his heart racing and thoughts whirling and every single remaining brain cell he has seems to spontaneously combust on the spot.

lucas is a really bad liar and has a really shitty poker face, so at least mark can tell right off the bat that he's not upset or those big brown eyes would turn into the human equivalent of that adorable pleading emoji and his pretty mouth would be frowning and instead, he just looks quietly surprised as he looks back at kai instead of him. soon after, his legs are gently guided off of lucas's lap and his arms tugged from their clingy grip until mark finds himself sitting facing his hyung, too, slouching a little and feeling dumb for missing lucas's giant palm on his back already.

"i get it, i promise," kai says, earnestly as ever, his gaze flicking back and forth between the two of them, likely judging how messy they both look in comparison to how effortlessly put together he is at present — well, and always. "probably more than you guys realize."

_huuuuuuh?_

mark is probably imagining it but he's pretty sure that he and lucas's heads tip to the side simultaneously, cocked like two dogs hearing a high-pitched noise for the first time.

kai only smiles gently at them.

"i was young once, too, you know," he teases, shaking his head fondly. "i was thirteen when i joined the company. i worked hard and learned as many dance styles as i could and trained to be a singer so i could be the best idol i could be and i gave up — _god_ , obviously, you both know how hard that is — i don't know why i'm telling you this."

it's endearing as hell, watching him run a hand through his hair, fold his hands in his lap, sigh, visibly trying to start over.

"i was in a group of twelve members and still felt so lonely, somehow. there were times when i thought about quitting the agency altogether just to see what it was like to hold hands with a girl in public without scrutiny, to kiss her and not care who saw us. obviously, these were immature thoughts that i never would've actually acted on, but sometimes it really bothered me that we were expected to sing these romantic songs when most of us hadn't even _dated_ anyone because we weren't allowed to.

one of my hyungs just had a way of seeing when i was frustrated or way too in my head and he just ... knew how to talk me down, i guess. i always kind of thought that he had this kind of sixth sense because i thought i was hiding it all so well, but i was probably just pouting and sulking around the dorms and leaving dinner early to go sit in my room by myself for a little while — why i thought isolating myself when all i wanted was the affection of other people doesn't really make sense now, obviously, but it did then. a lot of things make sense when they shouldn't when you're a teenager."

doesn't mark know it.

"i liked the attention. it was nice to just lay in bed, side by side, and let out all of my anxieties knowing that he wouldn't judge me and knowing that he'd probably tell me what i needed to hear, even if i didn't want to hear it, that he'd pat my cheek and tell me not to be so hard on myself and that everything was going to be okay. it was one of those nights when i decided to kiss him for the first time."

mark's heart maybe stops — temporarily, obviously — at the thought, seized by this mental picture of a younger kai, nervous and full of way too many emotions just like mark is all the time, like, right now to be exact, finally getting so desperate that he can't help but say fuck it and just _do_ something for once. maybe he feels kind of jealous, too, which is stupid because he's already kissed kai in real life and anyways, this is just a story. like, one of those parable things in the bible or something, he thinks. he’s gonna learn some big important lesson.

god, he's so good at annoying himself.

"he stopped me very soon after," kai continues, smile fading a little even if he seems determined to keep the corners of his mouth turned upwards. "he told me that it wasn't right — that he was supposed to be setting a good example for me since he was my hyung. it hurt pretty badly, but if anything, that little taste of ... _something_ just made me even more determined."

mark's fingers press against his knees.

"i didn't bring it up again for a long time, just let things go on as normal as though nothing had ever happened. we went through some — ah ... rough times, where we thought that the group was doomed to fail, never to recover from our losses, but we promised each other that we'd work even harder to make sure that that never happened. i suppose it was a good distraction for a while, but inevitably, i couldn't help sneaking into my hyung's room some nights and slipping under the covers, clinging to him even though he's always been smaller than me, letting him pet my hair and tell me that everything was going to be okay.

sometimes he'd even let me kiss him. sometimes he'd kiss me back. and if i ever dared try to go any further … he'd stop me, remind me yet again that he was my hyung, that this wasn't right because he was older and should know better — and it was his job to make sure that i knew better, too.

i gave up after a little while. so i dated around, desperate for some sense of _normalcy_ , someone to talk to who could relate to me, someone to feel some sort of _intimacy_ with. since things within the company — within my group — i kind of just. took a leap, went way out of my comfort zone. i’m sure you both know how well that went. the whole world knows.”

he stops, frowns, and mark thinks that his face is probably a mirror image. yeah, there was some stuff about him and jennie from blackpink earlier this year. it seemed like a kind of blink (ha ha — okay, _okay_ , no, don't laugh, this shit is serious) and you miss it kind of thing, but apparently it really hit him hard. _huh._

“it felt like shit. i wasn't heartbroken over her, mostly just … heartbroken for what we could've been, i guess, if our lives were different. if we didn't have to worry about things like _schedules._

but just like clockwork, minseok-hyung was there to comfort me.”

minseok-hyung. _kim minseok._ exo xiumin. _oh._

mark’s stomach churns strangely at this revelation, eyes likely wide as saucers as he blinks at kai, trying to reconcile the thought of the devastatingly handsome man in front of him pining for, cuddling with, _kissing_ his group’s eldest hyung, who mark had collaborated with a few years ago for an sm station track before their mutually ridiculous stints on “it’s dangerous beyond the blankets.”

it makes sense, he guesses. xiumin-hyung is a hard worker and seems to like keeping things in order, tidy and neat. of course he'd want to keep his work life and personal life organized separately, filed away in separate corners of his mind and heart. he gets it, kind of.

but he also doesn't, because looking at kai, seeing the slight furrow of his handsome brow once he realizes that he's unintentionally spilled his own secret, mark’s heart kind of seizes up and he really wants to clamber over to him and wrap his skinny little arms around his hyung’s body and hold him tight.

“i told him a week before he enlisted how badly i wanted him. i begged him to touch me — begged, practically threw a tantrum. he told me that he wanted to, but he couldn't. it wasn't right. he'd be leaving soon, and it wasn't fair to me to start something that he knew he couldn't follow through with.

i told him that i thought i loved him. he told me that he loved me too, but he wasn't _in_ love with me, and that he knew i wasn't _in_ love with him either — i was just in love with the idea of love. i cried and cried, made a whole scene, and ended up asleep in his bed, night after night, until the day came when his head needed shaving and he needed to leave his apartment behind.”

mark wishes he knew what to say. mark wishes he knew why kai was telling them this. is it supposed to be a cautionary tale? is kai trying to warn him and lucas that they're both eternally doomed?

he tries to send a telepathic message to lucas to get him to ask all of these things out loud, but by the blank look on lucas’s face, he can tell that it didn't work.

it's quiet for a little too long.

“god, i’m sorry, i didn't mean to — i don't really know why i felt like i needed to tell you all of that,” kai says with a grimace, fingers steepled under his chin. “i guess i just felt like i needed to — i don't know, apologize? for anything that i’ve done to either of you that may have been unwelcome. it's not any excuse, but i just … wasn't in a great place for a while. so i’m sorry for unwittingly making you uncomfortable, if so — and you both make a great couple, and i’m very happy for you both, _really_.”

and before he knows it, kai is trying to hastily push himself to his feet, face barely concealing an expression so bafflingly _sad_ that he imagines it’s what he would look like if someone threw his favorite gucci watch into the ocean.

“wait.”

oh, hey. that's lucas’s voice. he's finally decided to rejoin the land of the living.

“hyung, _wait_ ,” lucas days again, big eyes pleading up at kai until the other boy decides to slowly, very reluctantly, sit back down again. the god damn puppy dog eyes work every time.

“i really like you, hyung — uh. like … a lot?”

oh. uh oh. _uh oh._ mark hasn't had stage fright in a while, but he sure does now, waiting in the metaphorical wings, biting his lip as he watches lucas deliver what may as well be some big, sweeping shakespearean monologue with wide eyes, like romeo at juliet’s balcony, full of sexy, romantic energy.

“i just think you're really cool and handsome and talented and amazing and i really … really like you.”

oh shit. oh fuck. it's his turn, isn't it? get your shit together, mark lee.

why does he feel so painfully sober all of a sudden?

“i like you, too,” mark ekes out, so quietly that he's not sure if kai even heard him. _great fucking job_.

watching kai’s face cycle through about five different emotions, only two of them identifiable, is kind of nerve-wracking, makes him understand why taeyong always chews at his thumbnail when he's anxious, desperate and needing to do something to break the stillness.

“i like you guys, too. i’m very lucky to have met you.”

but mark can tell that he's holding back, can practically see the walls he's building up around himself appear in midair, like he thinks that they're just saying it to make him feel better about interrupting their — romantic makeouts, or whatever.

but it's not that. it's not that at all.

“no, no, _no_ — we _really_ fucking like you, hyung, like —” mark blurts out, louder this time as he finally finds his voice, sitting up straighter in his seat. “like. not just as our senior or — or our hyung, or whatever. we really fucking like _you_.”

there's something about the way that kai threads his fingers together and leans his chin against his folded hands as though deep in thought that makes mark feel … kind of powerful, because it's his words, he and lucas’s feelings, which have seemed to render kai speechless. it's a scary thing to confess to something that should be some kind of taboo for a multitude of reasons. but instead of feeling burdened by it, mark feels practically weightless, like a vice holding tightly onto his heart has been carefully deconstructed and removed.

“don't be silly,” kai practically pleads at last, brows knit together worriedly. “we shouldn't — _you_ shouldn't … you’re both _so young_ , you're only —”

“twenty. yeah, hyung, we know.”

“it doesn't matter! you're, like. you're allowed to be happy.”

it sounds silly coming out of mark’s mouth, maybe even said so matter-of-factly, _bluntly_ , that there’s the natural instinct to apologize for it if only because when did it become his place to tell a hyung what they can or cannot, _should_ or _should not_ feel? in summary: it's not his place. 

but mark feels it so deeply.

and that's how they end up kissing in the back seat of their van on the way back to their mansion-dorm-airbnb-whatever, lips sliding slowly, sensually against each other, really _savoring_ it, like they're afraid that when their lips part and their eyes blink dazedly open, they’ll never be able to experience such a thing ever again — _they_ being kai and lucas, each of them on either side of mark and leaning over him to meet in the middle, kai’s hand on mark’s thigh, keeping him present and tethered and not at risk of drifting away even when he feels like he's currently being hit with the continuously rough waves of a typhoon. his eyes feel as round as saucers as he watches this transpire as if in slow motion, the easy way kai licks into the seam of lucas’s mouth to guide him into opening up for him, the mere peek of tongue makes mark want to gasp but lucas beats him to the punch, inhaling sharply before burying a groan against his lips instead.

god. oh god. this is, like. happening?

mark’s hand curls into the back of lucas’s silky button down that seems severely at risk of becoming untucked the more his fingers fiddle with the fabric for lack of anything better to do with them. (and thank god for that, because maybe he should just pull the stupid shirt over lucas’s head, because maybe he should just run his fingers against his overwarm torso, trace each and every line of that lion’s head tattooed at the top of his rib cage—) half a breath later and lucas’s mouth is pressed against his and mark practically melts into it, a little less shy in the back of the van with bright city lights whizzing past them in a blur, only one pair of eyes fixated on them now. 

the thought of kai _watching_ them sends a pang through his gut — but not out of guilt. no, this time, it's … it's just kind of hot, thinking about it. thinking about how kai wants him. about how kai wants _them_. he thinks about kai’s tongue darting out to wet his lips as his gaze stays fixed intently on the two of them, thinks about the drag of lucas’s fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck as lucas coaxes him into a kiss that's deeper and dirtier and has way more teeth involved than anticipated, his lower lip pleasantly tingly and kiss-swollen.

he just plain _groans_ against lucas’s mouth when he feels the wet press of lips against the stretched column of his neck as he chases lucas’s kiss, needy all over again. kai’s perfect lips practically luxuriate over his skin, trailing upwards, with a drag of the flat of his tongue that leaves mark shivering and overwhelmed in the back of this van, his hand grabbing needily at kai’s hair to give him some semblance of control here, wanting to let go of both of them to try and regain himself but wanting to pull them both closer and lose himself in them even more.

he barely remembers arriving home, disembarking from their grand horny chariot in an uncoordinated mess of limbs as everyone somehow tries to hold everyone’s hands all at the same time which is physically impossible (except for mark, who feels pretty great to be sandwiched in between the two older boys, his fingers interlaced with kai’s and swinging their hands back and forth like an excitable little kid while lucas slings his arm around mark’s waist). he barely remembers squeezing through the threshold and sneaking with a fuckton of giggles to lucas’s single bedroom, marveling at how he got so lucky when mark and kai are stuck with endearingly annoying roommates that they both adore.

this is weird. or … maybe it _should_ be weird. weird _er_ , considering how at ease mark feels with lucas and jongin. ( _jongin?_ yeah, that feels right.)

mark inhales deeply, curls his toes around the imaginary ledge, and takes some big metaphorical leap of faith.

he lands amongst the pillows of lucas’s bed, fit snugly between them both, half naked and half hard and sneaking a hand beneath jongin’s shirt, feeling up the subtle definition of his torso as they kiss. it's slow — they can take their time, because it feels like they have all the time in the world. (logically, they don't. they have promotions. they have a tour. but it feels like they do, even with mark’s tipsy haze having been left behind in the back seat of their van, maybe.)

the sound of a long, low exhale wafts through the air, settles over mark as he and jongin’s lips part with a silly little smacking sound; fingers loosen their grip from the fabric of mark’s t-shirt as lucas seems to settle in closer to him, his body warm like a furnace as he presses against his back. with a breath of a laugh, mark turns his head, cranes his neck just enough to be able to catch a glimpse of his perfectly parted lips that frame each and every long inhale and exhale so prettily, eyes closed and lashes dusting his cheeks.

“i think we lost him “

jongin sits up a little straighter, displaces mark’s hand for the time being, and stretches so he can get a glimpse of their handsome bedmate, too, nodding slowly in confirmation with a low hum.

“i think you're right.”

mark feels a sheepish kind of smile sneak across his cheeks, suddenly hyper aware of — well. himself. everything. the cuddly boy behind him, the devastatingly handsome boy before him with a light brush of pink tingeing golden skin, illuminated by the twinkling lights of los angeles outside their window, nearly as pink as the kiss-swollen lower lip caught equally sheepishly between his teeth. his dick, still kind of hard in the snug confines of his boxer briefs.

he can feel the wave of shyness wash over him all of a sudden, tugging him slowly but surely back into reality from this weird kind of dreamscape he’s been living in where anything is possible — even something as decidedly _im_ possible as mark lee, wong yukhei, and kim jongin colliding together in one big wonderfully confusing mess in this bed and laughing and talking and kissing and fucking.

 _god_ , he wants that. he wants that _so fucking badly_.

he’s also cognizant of the fact that it is super fucking late at night — to the point that mark is afraid to sneak a peek at the clock on lucas’s bedside table. they’ve been awake for a frankly ridiculous number of hours. they busted their asses during their dress rehearsal this morning, and then busted them all over again during their actual set. he’s most definitely drank more alcohol than he’s ever had, which he’s pretty sure applies to lucas, too, considering the ease with which he’d drifted off, murmuring silly little things in between kisses until he abruptly went silent. (he doesn’t know about jongin, that sexy enigma.) they have a q&a event at twitter headquarters tomorrow. he already knows he’s going to feel like shit in the morning.

so maybe he balks a little.

“i think ... maybe lucas had the right idea,” mark tries, voice sounding small. “maybe, uh. maybe we should try to sleep, too.”

he’s nervous. he’s annoyed that he’s nervous. he wants this — wants _him_ , wants _them_. he’s annoyed that he’s being rational. it’s a little too quiet all of a sudden and it makes him want to cry or puke or something because he _needs_ jongin to understand how badly he wants this despite the unconvincing babbling he's doing.

what if sex was all that jongin wanted tonight? what if he thinks that mark is rejecting him? what if he's ruining this for good by pumping the brakes right now, what if he —

mark’s (absurdly, rapidly spiraling) thoughts are silenced by a pair of plush lips against his, soft, hands cupping his cheeks, thumbs brushing over his cheekbones that (he's been told) look more and more prominent each day. he finds himself sighing once the kiss ends, forehead pressing against jongin’s to keep him close, basking in his glow, his warmth, his kindness, afraid for what might happen once they part.

“you're right,” jongin says at last, and mark probably holds his breath waiting for what comes next. “i don’t want to rush this. i think we should take our time.”

 _oh_ , god, he could cry.

it’s been a long fucking day.

nose bumping clumsily against jongin’s out of sheer eagerness, mark tips his head to kiss that beautiful mouth once, twice, three times, savoring each and every kiss he can steal. so what if he drifts off a few times with his lips still stubbornly insisting on trying to keep going, waking up briefly to move his mouth as though he didn’t fall asleep in the middle of a kiss. 

he finally zonks out for real with lucas spooning him for dear life and his face in the crook of jongin’s neck, probably doing something embarrassing like drooling into his collarbone or something.

  


* * *

  


they have time. they have _time_ , even if it may not be as much as any of them would like. either way, there’s this unspoken agreement between all of them to take it slow, ease into this … relationship(?) that they all so clearly want despite the pretty unceremonious, clumsy way it began.

the whole group goes out for breakfast the next morning before they head to twitter hq, and mark thinks that they’ve maybe gotten away with everything after some careful maneuvering out of lucas’s bedroom — until mark zones out in the middle of their conversation, still sleepy and definitely, _definitely_ hungover as fuck, misses that someone asked him a question entirely until he hears ten proudly proclaim with a shit-eating grin, “don’t worry about him, guys, he’s just tired out from all that dick—” before being shut up by taeyong’s hand clamped hastily over his evil, evil mouth.

okay, so maybe not.

but it’s okay. 

they have a few days left in california to soak up the sun, swim in the pool, eat a bunch of american food that baekhyun and taemin have never had before like in-n-out burger, but then they have to pack up their home away from home that was never really theirs to begin with even if it really felt like it. 

it’s bittersweet. mark could be the kind of cliché cool guy that he most definitely _isn’t_ and say that he’s going to miss this big, ridiculous house because, like, he could get used to this, et cetera, it’s gonna be tough giving up the lavish lifestyle they’ve lived here in favor of their dorm rooms back home, but in reality, mark’s just. kind of feeling really fucking sentimental, like he’s a kid in the middle of a cheesy eighties coming of age movie who has to pack up his childhood belongings and move out of his family home and learn lessons about, like, growing up and stuff.

fuck. _family_. they’ve become a family, all seven of them.

“i’m gonna miss you,” mark mumbles as he walks side by side with ten down the long hallway to their gate at lax, brim of his baseball cap tugged low and his mask hiding his very deep frown.

ten pinches his arm.

“will you relax? we’re going to be back together in less than a month.”

mark just grumbles incoherently in response, wishing this silly cardigan he chose to wear today over his t-shirt had pockets for him to angstily shove his hands into.

“besides, even though everything should be about me always, i know you’re just trying to make me feel better about not missing me as much as you’ll miss them. just go up to manager-nim and do a little sweet talking and i bet that he can get the gate attendant to switch your seat so the three of you can make disgusting googly eyes at each other for twelve-plus hours while inhaling each other’s recycled oxygen.”

man, ten can be super fucking smart sometimes.

“and yes, i’m jealous because i really miss johnny.”

_there it is._

ten is right, as he usually is — not that anyone ever likes to admit it, considering that smug, catlike smile that curls across his lips when it happens.

that less-than-a-month goes a little quicker than mark ever anticipated, jumping around from songwriting sessions with taeyong for 127’s spring comeback to choreography brush-ups before the group heads to singapore to perform at the kamp festival. he tells himself to relax a little, too, while he can — but he’s mark lee. he doesn’t know how to relax.

there’s a certain bounce in his step, he’s sure of it. well, his members make sure that he’s sure of it, with johnny teasing him (“i know what you did while you were gone. did you think you could get away with not telling me all the torrid details of your secret, sexy love affair?” he asks, waggling his eyebrows, and mark swears that he’s going to punch ten so hard the next time he sees him) and donghyuck being uncharacteristically forgiving (“ _maaaaark_ -hyung, _hyung_ , hyung, _hyungie_ , pay attention to meee,” he whines, grabbing for mark’s phone which he’s been smiling down at for the past forty five minutes, only to let out a soft little “ _oh_ ” once he sees the names on the screen, giving mark an annoyingly exaggerated, loud smack of a kiss on the top of his head and leaving him be). yuta wraps his arms around mark from behind and hugs him close, his cheek pressed against mark’s black hair, idly commenting, “you seem happier these days, mark lee. it suits you.”

he is. he’s really, really happy, even if it’s just from talking about how tired they all are from their daily schedules or sending “”ugly”” selcas to each other ( _right_ , like kim jongin and wong yukhei are capable of such a thing), from mark sending little snippets of verses he’s been working on to unanimous emoji praise to their first three-way call late one night, which mostly amounted to them saying “hi” to each other like fifty times in between awkward giggling, obviously unused to anything remotely like this, _super_ obviously unused to hearing each other’s voices live and in action after a few weeks. it’s after a flight with 127 on november 5th that mark realizes that it’s been one month together with them, even if they spent it apart and busy.

it doesn’t deter him, though.

before mark knows it, he’s shuttling back to incheon international with ten ruffling his hair and taeyong and lucas walking side by side, almost comical in their height difference, both of them dressed like the world is their own personal runway and, well, it kind of is if the constant flashing of fansites’ cameras have anything to say about it. 

he’s airborne again and he’s never been happier for thirteen hours in the sky as they travel back to america, his small fingers interlaced with lucas’s much larger ones, knowing that soon, they’ll be on the ground, reuniting with their hyungs.

superm is officially on tour.

dallas, their first show. unforgettable. watching ten and lucas from the wings during their solos, beaming proudly because neither of them have ever been on tour before, have never performed to such a big crowd screaming for them. _hell_ , lucas has never had a solo before at all. mark grins from ear to ear during the entirety of “bass go boom”.

chicago comes next, with a day off spent with jongin and lucas at his side as they explore the city and mark shows them around just like johnny did for him the year prior during 127’s tour, takes them to the best place for deep dish pizza and still makes them go to portillo’s for chili cheese dogs afterwards anyways even though he thinks his meager stomach is going to explode. mark’s heart swells when he catches jongin marveling up at the skyscrapers rather than his own reflection in the bean as he’d expected, realizing just how special this must be for him.

they squish together and take a selca, looking warped and ridiculous in the bean’s contoured reflection. it’s cute. mark sets it as his wallpaper on his phone.

atlanta. washington, dc — the nation’s capital. _daaaamn._

new york, though. new york is different. 

while mark got to explore new york city with his 127 members before their tour date in newark, traversing the city via subway and basically taking a whole ass photoshoot with taeyong, showing up to surprise fans at an organized random play dance in washington square park, and eating treats, and while mark got to _perform_ in new york city during the global citizen festival, superm’s concert tonight … 

is at madison square garden. not that the other tour stop venues have been any less impressive, but, like … it’s madison square motherfucking garden, where billy joel sells out shows every month. elton john and john lennon and elvis and one direction and madonna and bruce springsteen and the who and u2 and taylor swift and the pope have all stood on that stage and soon, mark lee will, too. 

mark lee, a solo rapper. weird. it's been weird in every other city, too, but a sold out crowd of 20,000 is something else entirely as he flies through his quick and crafty verses of “talk about”, the spotlight on him and him alone as he saunters across the stage with the kind of natural charisma that people would kill to possess (or so he's been told).

the whole concert flies by as mark throws himself into every part of it, and it's only as he's emptied his basket of signed balls (after giggling at a throw so bad by taemin-hyung that it somehow ends up boomeranging back at him and bouncing at his own feet), as he takes a glance up at the two tall blueberries grinning as they sing up on the raised platform of their set piece, as he looks back and forth between both of them, lucas and jongin and jongin and lucas, that he realizes it.

 _damn_. he always does that — runs full speed ahead through each and every task or challenge that lies before him, busts his ass and sprints until he shatters all expectations and comes out of it panting and victorious but only a blur to remember it all by.

no. he won't do that now — he can't. 

two sets of hands grab for mark’s wrists to tug him up onto the platform with them as mark laughs through the chorus, sandwiched between lucas and jongin as they sway from side to side in a funky little dance, as jongin pulls him close with an arm around his waist, as lucas grins so widely at him that his eyes disappear into two crescent moons, his pearly whites blinding and beautiful.

slow down. remember this. _remember this_.

he's happy — he's _so_ happy. he's borderline euphoric.

“ _inside i’m reeling_

_from moments like this_

_with you._ ”

he loves them.

  


* * *

  


december 5th.

still kind of reeling after performing at the macy’s thanksgiving day parade in new york city, mark is in san jose to perform with 127 for a big radio station’s once-a-year concert with a whole bunch of famous american artists. lizzo passes him in the hallway and says, “ _daaaamn_ ,” so he says, “ _daaaamn_ ,” right back.

he misses lucas and jongin.

january 5th.

fukuoka, japan — the second night of neo city: the origin. he’s so tired after two nonstop days that he falls right asleep in their hotel room after, knowing they have to haul ass early in the morning to fly back to incheon. 

he forgets to call lucas and jongin before he passes out, and wakes up to a notification of a missed facetime call and a bunch of sleepy-faced emojis intermingling with some heart-eyed ones.

he _really_ misses lucas and jongin.

february 5th.

they’ve been reunited, thank fucking _god_.

the second leg of the we are the future: live tour has been a godsend (thanks, dude (god)! for the, uh, boyfriends!) and mark couldn’t be happier. so what if he’s been a little clingier than normal? so what if his heart feels way too big for his tiny chest every single time he meets jongin’s gaze across the stage, every time he fist bumps lucas and gets his ass playfully smacked as they get ready to perform “2 fast”?

so what.

it’s february 5th, and it’s their four month anniversary. any other time, four months is kind of a weird, random one to go balls to the walls hard for, but considering their … _unique_ circumstances, perhaps mark can be forgiven. after all, it is the very first anniversary that they’ll actually be able to spend together.

best of all, it’s a travel day, so there’s no concert to prepare for and perform in, really nothing to distract them from the day other than a brief halt at the canadian border as they travel to vancouver from seattle. he even gets a “welcome home!” from a nice lady at customs. it’s gonna be a great day!

except for the part where it’s, like. a fine day. like — it’s nothing special. it’s fine. 

the group goes out for dinner together, all of them loud and rambunctious and it’s fun and delicious and. well. maybe mark was hoping for a little bit of alone time with jongin and lucas, but instead, he gets a soft kiss on the mouth by the former and a squeeze of his side by the latter with a promise of a big, delicious breakfast with the members in the morning as they drop him off at the door of his hotel room that he’s sharing with ten. 

maybe his face falls a little when they walk away, and maybe mark waits another few minutes to gather himself and straighten up before he heads inside, wiping the frown off of his face before ten can even think about heckling him about what’s wrong with him and why.

even though there's nothing wrong with him, obviously.

they're performing at the rogers arena tomorrow where the canucks play, which is pretty cool (even if he's a devoted leafs fan at heart). better yet, despite being clear across the country, some of his school friends from toronto who knew him back when he was even tinier and dropping the deuces as he took pictures of himself in his dirty mirror for myspace are coming to see the show — to see him.

it's gonna be a good day, even if mark has a hard time falling asleep because he's too busy thinking about how he probably loves his boyfriends more than they love him because mark doesn't know how to contain himself and _especially_ doesn’t know how to _not be good at things_ even if it's something as deep and abstract as being in love. they like playing onstage and cozying up together afterwards, and they like kissing each other in various permutations, like petting and touching and undressing each other even if it never really goes further than the occasional jerk-off or helpful handjob because no matter how badly mark wants to fuck them (or — _god — be_ fucked by them), it wouldn't really be the responsible thing to do when they have such packed and precise schedules the next day. they have obligations — to the fans, to their management, to each other.

lust and love can maybe get confused with one another … maybe. mark kind of thought he was in love with kang mina for a while after all of their over-the-top, questionably scripted flirtations onstage during their time as music core mcs turned into a few stolen kisses backstage, which turned into one very heated make out in a dressing room that ended up with mina giggling as mark pressed her against the wall and tried to sneak a hand up her miniskirt … only to get it playfully smacked away as she ducked beneath his arm to reapply her lip gloss to her pretty mouth, smiling earnestly at him with maybe a little bit of sympathy in her gaze (for him — for both of them, maybe) as she told him, “i’m really glad we’re friends, mark.”

maybe he's having deja vu.

breakfast with the boys is fine, even if he’s quieter than usual. taemin gives him a reassuring squeeze to his bicep when baekhyun helpfully (and loudly) proclaims, “our baby mark-ah must be excited and nervous for his big homecoming show tonight.” mark just smiles a little weakly, nods his head because yeah, that’s it, except for the fact that it’s not.

he takes the world’s shortest cat nap in the van on the way to the arena, his neck craning so he can lay his head on lucas’s shoulder even if he’ll likely regret it when he’s sore and forgets why later. during soundcheck, jongin hugs him from behind, arms held tightly around his middle like mark is a baby kitten he’s expecting to try wriggling out of his grip, and mark sighs and lets himself go slack against him, tipping his chin up so he can lean his temple against jongin’s cheek as they walk goofily together around the stage, yelling stupid things as their microphones are adjusted through the soundboard, a little moment of solace even as baekhyun is wailing out some kind of note so high that he’d think that only dogs could hear it if he weren’t, like, also hearing it right now.

 _relax_. stop being dramatic. they care about you so much.

hanging out with his school friends between soundcheck and the show is so, _so_ nice — genuinely. it takes him out of the kpop megastar idol world and plants him right back in toronto like he never left. they talk to him about their jobs, their wacky parents, about stuff like who of their classmates are engaged or pregnant or already _have_ babies, which is like. holy shit. they’re 20. he’s barely had a real relationship in his whole life and people are getting married and starting families and shit and that’s a concept so foreign to mark that it kind of makes his head spin.

either way, he’s happy to listen, happy to get out of the bubble for a little while. they take selcas and he tells them to enjoy the concert and when they tell him what bar they’re going out to afterwards, he gives them a solid _maybe_ that turns into a hard _no_ as he exits the stage, so tired from last night’s lack of sleep combined with the mental gymnastics he’s been doing for the past twenty four to forty eight hours combined with the sheer exertion that even a ninety minute concert requires that he kind of just wants to find jongin and lucas and slip his fingers in between theirs and drag them back to he and ten’s hotel room so they can press close to him, envelop him, make him feel warm and loved as he drifts off to sleep, _finally_.

except then when he approaches them, jongin is already waving cheerily, informing him with the sort of earnestness that makes mark want to yell because it’s not even fair: “we’re going out for dinner with baekhyunnie and taeminnie — have fun with your friends!”

“yeah, tell us everything in the morning,” lucas says with a wide grin, looking so genuinely happy for mark to be able to spend some time with his school friends that he might burst.

mark certainly isn’t going to burst that bubble.

“okay,” is all he says with a small smile, his arms draping around each of their necks so he can pull them into a meager hug that will have to tide him over until … whenever.

 _ugh_ , mark’s stomach drops. 

lucas and jongin really _did_ forget their anniversary.

  


* * *

  


that’s how he ends up wide awake and almost interrupting some horny facetime action between ten and johnny.

that’s how he ends up standing stupidly in the hotel hallway looking like a lost child.

that’s how he ends up in taeyong’s bed, stuck awake for what feels like an eternity despite the exhaustion that clings to his bones, the dull ache of sadness that pulses in his chest every now and again as he wallows in his own self-pity.

that’s how he ends up … blinking his eyes open slowly after apparently falling asleep at some point, rubbing away the dampness that pricks at the corners of his eyes that’s just, like. a thing that happens when he wakes up sometimes. there are voices, low and hushed, and as mark’s eyes flutter closed again, he makes himself listen closely.

“he was really upset last night, you know.”

 _taeyong_. he sounds serious. stern. not unlike the leader that he is when he’s around nct and someone eats someone else’s leftovers from the fridge or when people like johnny are taking too much time during their dance practice break taking total thirst-trappy selcas in the mirror for the fans or ten or both. it’s the same tone of voice he uses when someone starts to doubt themselves or get down on their own abilities during a rough rehearsal — it’s a voice that mark’s pretty well acquainted with.

“oh…”

lucas.

“oh, shit.”

jongin.

“i’m going to get breakfast with ten and the hyungs, but i expect that you guys will make things right in the meantime. he really, _really_ cares about you.”

there’s silence for a moment, and then jongin’s voice again.

“thank you for taking care of him, taeyongie.”

after some shuffling and the sound of taeyong grabbing his wallet off of the little side table that’s oh-so-close to mark’s closed eyes as he fake-sleeps through it all, taeyong bids them farewell and the door closes in that loud, echo-y, surprising way that hotel room doors always do. maybe it makes him jump a little, giving him away, but either way, he can feel (and hear) the mattress dip beside him as both of them tentatively sit down one after the other, and mark’s feeling a little stubborn despite all the sentimentality taeyong’s unknowingly infused him with, so he stays facing away from them, eyes still squeezed shut.

“mark-ah,” jongin says softly, his voice dripping honey sweet in mark’s ear.

“mark, hey,” lucas follows, never close to as formal as the hyungs are with him. unlike jongin, lucas reaches out, his big hand settling on mark’s side, fingers idly curling and uncurling into the fabric of his oversized t-shirt.

“talk to us, won’t you?”

no, mark doesn’t think that he will. not yet, anyway, when he’s still kind of thinking that if he ignores them long enough, he’ll fall asleep and they’ll cuddle with him or at least leave him be. stubborn, maybe, but it feels kind of earned even if he acknowledges that it’s stupid.

so it’s quiet. he can practically imagine the cartoonishly befuddled looks on lucas and jongin’s faces as they look at each other, trying to wordlessly communicate.

“we’re sorry,” lucas blurts out suddenly. “we’re really sorry. we didn’t realize —”

“we didn’t forget,” jongin interrupts, before mark’s thoughts can spiral even further. “i promise, we didn’t forget.”

“it really feels like you did.”

oh. that’s his own voice. welcome to the party, no-longer-fake-asleep mark lee. still, he doesn’t want to face them right now — not when he’s not sure how to school his expression into anything other than a deep, likely pouty frown.

“we could never,” comes the soft reassurance of jongin, a hand reaching out to mark finally to card gently through his bleached grayish-brownish hair. “we didn’t want to distract you, or … take away from your time with your friends… it sounds kind of stupid in retrospect.”

“yeah, like. you’re always so _focused_ , mark. you always put so much of yourself into your performances and we didn’t want to — i don’t know, take you out of that mindset. we know how hard you work for everything to be as perfect as it is. we care about you _so much_ , dude.”

“ _plus_ ,” jongin supplies helpfully, “now that this leg of the tour is over, it means we can do anything that we want to do until it’s time to go home.”

huh.

after a moment’s consideration, mark rolls over to face them at last, bedhead abound and lids still heavy with sleep and his stubble prickles against his palm when he scrubs his hand over his face thoughtfully.

“anything?”

  


* * *

  


that's how mark lee ends up with two of jongin’s fingers stretching him wide as they press deeper, how he ends up keening needily and arching his back to press his chest closer to lucas’s full lips when the flat of his tongue drags teasingly over one of his nipples.

“i’m ready,” mark gasps as jongin’s graceful fingers curl purposefully inside of him, dragging against his walls.

“no, you're not,” jongin practically _chides_ , which is kind of sexy, but still not as sexy as the look on jongin’s face as he glances (down) at lucas, whose hand is fisted around his dick and stroking lazily, practically glassy-eyed as he watches jongin finger mark. _god,_ they’re both so sexy.

he's going to die here in lucas’s hotel room bed, swathed in white sheets and probably (... hopefully … definitely …) covered in his own come because this is surely some kind of fucking god tier wet dream that he's having that will likely sustain his horny little self for weeks.

lube-slick fingers draw back and fuck into him again, except this time —

“oh, _fuck_ —”

his entire body downright _shudders_ as jongin grazes over his prostate, instinctively reaching out and grabbing onto lucas’s forearm in some attempt to ground himself, fingers curling inwards, little crescent moons digging into sunkissed skin, desperate. no sound leaves his mouth but his mouth hangs open anyway as he pants softly, so fucking worked up already, his cock hard and leaking onto his belly. 

lucas seems to take that as an invitation — _by all fucking means —_ and leans down to kiss mark nice and deep, teeth clacking together once until he can find a good spot half-laying down next to him, flat of his tongue dragging against mark’s just once before sealing their mouths together again. he’s nice enough to take the reins, nice enough to not give a shit that mark is practically fucked out of his mind already from two fingers alone and he’s barely coherent enough to kiss with the same kind of purpose back (though not for a lack of trying).

he kind of likes how sloppy it is, either way, the fact that there’s saliva coating his kiss-swollen lips when jongin brushes against his prostate again and mark moans uselessly against lucas’s mouth.

jongin keeps fucking him, keeps teasing him with purposeful stokes of his fingers that make mark’s every nerve ending light up all at once, squirming against the mattress, heels pulled closed as his thighs part further, rocking against his hand, overwhelmed as fuck but selfishly wanting _more, more, more_ either way.

“do you think you can take another?” jongin asks, and mark makes himself blink his eyes open so he can look up at him, look at how dark his eyes look with his pupils blown out, take in the way that jongin looks like he wants to devour him whole even if his voice is even and measured and even a little soft. “be honest with me.”

okay. he can do that. he can be honest.

“uhhh,” is his eloquent response, emphasized by the very elegant way he squirms beneath of of their gazes, so fucking horny but so fucking weird sometimes when it comes to talking about this shit out loud.

lucas’s dick is, like. big. he _wants_ more, but he also probably quite literally _needs_ more. except …

“think i’m gonna come if you keep — keep doing that, hyung,” mark ekes out from behind his veil of embarrassment and desperation. “like. like, for real.”

he swears that a look of _who, little old me?_ crosses jongin’s face for the briefest moment, but then he smiles, ever-genuine.

“that’s kind of the point, mark-ah.”

 _oh._ oh. well. he’s not sure he’s going to survive the orgasm that comes from this, despite nobody even having touched his dick at all, so god help him with whatever follows.

as per usual, though, mark lee is no quitter. in fact, he’s an overachiever.

“i can,” mark insists, feigning confidence even if his body betrays him with each little quiver that runs through him with jongin’s idle touches. “i want another, hyung. please.”

he was raised to have good manners, at least, even with regards to being fingered within an inch of his life by one of his two (2) boyfriends before getting railed by the other one of his two (2) boyfriends.

his eyes screw shut and his teeth catch his lip as jongin slowly, slowly eases out of him, slowly, _slowly_ works three fingers back in, a pathetic little mewl leaving him at the burn of the stretch as he tries to adjust, cock twitching and spurting precome the moment he hears lucas moan a low, “ _fuck,_ ” at the mere sight of jongin’s fingers buried deep inside of him. 

oh shit. oh fuck. one small quirk of jongin’s fingers and mark is done for. he’s dead. he’s gone. he’s already fucking coming with a moan that breaks off into a whine, a flood of white over his field of vision as he comes all over his own stomach, clenching around jongin’s fingers as he rides it out, hips squirming and he grabs uselessly for lucas again to no avail until lucas’s big hand finds his instead, fingers interlacing as he lets mark squeeze the life out of him.

he’s breathing so hard, his heart’s beating so fast — it feels like he just ran a fucking marathon. performed a sold out concert. blah blah blah, some cliché. 

_holy fuck_.

“holy fuck.”

his vision’s hazy and he feels kind of like he might float up and off this bed, but one glance at lucas, flushed and squeezing the base of his cock with the hand that’s not holding his makes him realize that he better get his shit together and _fast_. jongin looks kind of _proud_ , frankly.

he probably has a right to, considering his fingers are still inside of mark.

“hyung,” he starts, trying to re-steady his voice even though he’s pretty sure he still sounds a little shaky and weak and totally lame. “hyung, can i — am i ready?”

jongin simply nods, leaning his body over mark and pressing a shockingly chaste kiss against his naturally pouted lips as he slides his fingers out carefully, much to mark’s unexpected chagrin as he makes a small sound of displeasure. 

“come here, come here,” jongin says softly as he maneuvers himself so his back is against the headboard of the overlarge hotel bed, extending his hand to take mark’s. “sit up. come sit here with me.”

mark is pretty sure that his legs aren’t going to work when he tries to sit up, but lucas and jongin holding his hands must give him some kind of strength because he does sort of manage, even if he still is a little wobbly like a newborn baby giraffe that doesn’t have a damn clue how to walk yet. he pretty much just crawls over to jongin, flops uselessly against him, back pressed against his front as a long exhale escapes him.

lucas follows dutifully, even if he looks like he just might burst if his dick doesn’t get any action soon, and — sweetly and with a quiet, “here, hyung,” he grabs the few pillows they’d discarded and hands them to jongin so he can be more comfortable pressed back against the headboard. _god_ , lucas is so good and nice. and sexy.

jongin presses a soft kiss to the shell of mark’s ear and wraps his arms around mark’s waist, giving him a small, reassuring squeeze as lucas finally allows himself the relief of a few strokes of his wrist. better yet, he nudges the bottle of lube over towards lucas who looks almost embarrassed by his own eagerness, but he squeezes some into the palm of his hand and works up and down his length, unflinching at the temperature (unlike mark, earlier).

“xuxi, please,” mark hears himself saying after staring at his dick for probably way too fucking long, once a pang of desire rolls through his stomach, once he realizes how fucking weird it feels to be empty and clenching around nothing after being so devotedly opened up.

lucas’s big puppy eyes are round and wide but he nods, running a hand through his black wavy hair before scooting closer to both of them, hand fisted around the base of his cock. when he lines himself up with mark’s hole, the tip of his tongue peeks out from between his lips, his brow furrowed as he concentrates so intensely, and it’s _so_ cute, it’s _so_ —

_oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck._

the head of his cock eases in past mark’s rim with the help of the lube, and it’s not until he’s pushing in further that mark realizes that he’s holding his breath, or maybe feeling like he got the wind knocked out of him. he can feel his walls stretching to accommodate him, but _fuck_ , it’s intense, adjusting as lucas sinks deeper and deeper. he’s panting again and biting back whiny little sounds that threaten to escape him, but jongin’s hand reaches up to card through his hair, gently scratching his scalp and sending a shiver down mark’s spine, and he’s reassured.

“so tight,” lucas grits out, looking just about as wrecked as mark feels already. “something’s —”

“the angle?” jongin suggests. 

mark’s too out of his mind to comprehend whatever conversation they’re having, wordless or otherwise, considering the fact that he’s possibly dying a beautiful death right now. lucas’s hands sneak beneath mark’s knees and skim up the underside of his thighs, pushing his legs back to give lucas some more room to move, but.

maybe he should’ve stretched or something before this, or maybe he should’ve asked ten to teach him whatever evil hex he used to become able to fold himself in half at a moment’s notice, unprompted (even if ten would probably have just told him that it was his own secret horny magic and his own secret horny magic alone). he can feel the muscles of his thighs, stretched out and taut and maybe pushed just a little too far because he can feel those muscles burning a little, and mark just _groans_.

“can’t stay like this for a long time,”

and luckily, after only a few moments’ pause with his dick still inside of mark, he can see the metaphorical lightbulb go off over lucas’s head. without another word, he legs go of the backs of mark’s legs so he can grip his hips instead, urge mark’s legs to wrap around his waist, which presses lucas just that little bit deeper and makes mark moan wantonly. his hips are lifted up off the bed but jongin still holds him close with one arm, his mouth grazing over the line of mark’s neck, and his free hand carelessly smears mark’s come up the mild definition of his stomach as he touches him so gently.

“go on, lucas. i think you can move.”

or so says kim jongin.

though he’s hesitant on the first few tries, it isn’t long before lucas gains confidence and starts to draw out and then fuck back into mark far more assuredly, his pace almost agonizingly slow, his fingers pressing hard into the flesh of mark’s hips to hold him in place. mark’s still sensitive from his first orgasm, still sensitive from being taken apart piece by piece by jongin, so each thrust practically has him moaning in turn, head tipping back so he can lay it on jongin’s shoulder while lucas fucks him.

“faster,” mark breathes. “faster, faster. i can take it.”

lucas groans and obeys, hips snapping more purposefully as he drives into him again and again, and mark can barely keep his shit together between that and jongin’s full lips dragging against his jaw, pressing full, long kisses and maybe even leaving a mark. _fuck_ , that’s such a thought. the makeup noonas are going to be _pissed_.

but it doesn’t matter. nothing matters except lucas fucking him hard and fast and jongin’s palm grazing up mark’s torso so the pad of his finger can tease at one of his nipples and oh, damn, when did his dick get hard again?

 _fuck_ , he loves them. 

he loves them, he loves them, he loves them. 

“ _i love you_ ,” mark gasps as another orgasm rips through him, catching him by surprise as come spurts up onto his stomach, onto his chest, onto jongin’s hand. 

his mind shuts off, his eyes squeeze closed, and he’s clenching around lucas until lucas is coming inside of him with a loud groan, too, white hot, his hips rolling into mark over and over again right through it.

mark just shivers when lucas pulls out and lets himself sink back against jongin, boneless and sore and tingly all over and he’s just. so tired. he’s so fucking tired.

he’s so fucking happy.

eyes still closed, mark can feel jongin moving him like a rag doll so he can crawl out from under him, and with lucas’s help, they maneuver him until he’s laying back on a fuckton of pillows, chest heaving while he comes down from everything and …

it might be seconds later or maybe minutes, but mark can swear he hears the sound of jongin moaning low in his throat, can hear the lewd sounds of saliva and wet, messy kisses, and _damn_ , if lucas is blowing jongin right now, he wants to watch, too, god damnit. 

it’s really too bad that he drifts off, all of his life force sapped away by the two most attractive people he’s ever laid eyes on.

  


* * *

  


daylight peeks through the blinds.

good, that means it’s still day time.

that means he still has all the time in the world today to spend with the two warm bodies pressed on either side of him, an arm slung over him each, holding him close to them like they’re afraid of what might happen if they let him go.

mark stretches his legs out a little, nuzzles his cheek against his pillow, a hint that he’s finally been reincarnated after dying and going off to horny heaven even if keeping his eyes open for too long feels impossible when he’s surrounded by their warmth.

“we love you too, you know,” jongin’s voice murmurs in his ear.

and in the other: 

“yeah. we love you, dude.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to my wonderfully kind and talented friends who helped me survive writing this thing even when i was certain that i would never. 
> 
> superm forever, etc.
> 
> follow me on [twt](http://www.twitter.com/satanicbaek)!


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